


Diminuendo

by Nenalata



Category: Fire Emblem Series, Fire Emblem: Fuukasetsugetsu | Fire Emblem: Three Houses
Genre: Budding Love, Established Relationship, F/M, Fluff, I promise!!!, Making Out, Miscommunication, Post-Canon, Singing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-02
Updated: 2020-08-02
Packaged: 2021-03-05 22:15:33
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,607
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25662709
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nenalata/pseuds/Nenalata
Summary: Peacetime was for people like Annette. But for Felix?All Felix could do in peacetime was destroy.
Relationships: Annette Fantine Dominic/Felix Hugo Fraldarius
Comments: 15
Kudos: 68





	Diminuendo

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Curlsandcollege](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Curlsandcollege/gifts).



> A little somethin-something for Curlsandcollege, who's been such a kind supporter of my work for so long that I was really touched they asked me to write for them! Thank you so much for letting me write NetteFlix awkwardness and NetteFlix fluff. Hope you all enjoy the fruits of their excellent request.

Words were not Felix’s forte.

He didn’t wield them with the easy, charismatic grace his brother or father had. No silver tongue for the youngest Fraldarius: just a sharp one, cutting through half-truths and delusions to get to the real point, to the thoughts cowards feared voicing.

Felix wielded words like he did everything else: like a weapon. Like a tool of destruction.

So why had he expected anything to change when it came to Annette?

“A warrior like me has no place in peacetime,” he’d confessed the night Edelgard’s crown toppled to the throne room floor alongside her corpse. “I have no more enemies to fell, no place to put my blade save its sheathe. Forever, most likely.”

“Isn’t that a good thing?” Annette had asked, bundled into her bedroll like a cozy caterpillar. And Felix, so overwhelmed by the very sight of her being _comfortable_ and _safe_ and _happy_ , had no adequate reply save a kiss that lasted too long and too conspicuously for thin tent walls.

Peacetime was for people like her. But for Felix?

“Why are you always so _cruel_ to me?” The bite of Garreg Mach’s wind blew Annette’s hair around her tear-streaked cheeks, and she fled before he could get a word in.

All Felix could do in peacetime was destroy.

* * *

“Uh—Annette. Can I…sit? Here. With you.”

Annette glanced up from her book and half-eaten stew to see Felix looming over her like a titan armed with a spicy meat pie. “Yeah, of course,” she said, fussing with her bowl and book and belongings as if they were taking up too much space. Felix settled into the bench across from her and fiddled with the crust of his supper.

“You don’t need to ask to sit, you know,” Annette began, but Felix barreled through her kindness with the apology speech he’d memorized.

“I’m sorry for earlier. When I said I liked your lyrics. About the orange trees. And the dance you did. And the footwork. And I’m sorry if I was cruel. And because I didn’t, uh,” he blushed as red as the oozing bear meat in his pie, “make you happy. So. I’m sorry. For that. That’s all. Goodbye,” he said, jumping to his feet. His knees knocked straight into the table, jostling every item ranging from his meal to the joints in his kneecaps. Annette squeaked and shoved her book to her chest as angry red juice splashed towards the pages.

“I—” Felix bit down on a curse. Two weeks out of war, and he’d already lost his grace. _Ha. His Grace._ He bent over the table to—what, wipe up the sauce with his sleeve?—but succeeded only in bumping the wood again, splashing more droplets and crumbs in Annette’s direction. Annette leaned away, and even though Felix knew it was only to protect her expensive magic tome, the sight of her _recoiling_ sent agonizing mortification lancing through his heart. He settled for crouching over the table like a beast, terrified of moving. Terrified of ruining things even _more_.

“Sorry,” he said again.

“You’re apologizing a lot,” Annette said.

Felix scowled and blushed all at once. “So what if I am?”

“It’s...” Annette wiggled her fingers, and the remnants of their dinner neatly swooped back into their respective bowls. “It wasn’t a big deal, you know?”

When he was sure he wouldn’t make a mess of things again, Felix lowered himself back to the bench. “It seemed like it was.”

Annette blinked her— _pretty, she was always so pretty_ —blue eyes and raised a delicately-arched orange brow. “I mean…they’re just dumb songs, Felix. I know you, uh, like them and all, but you don’t need to…take this so seriously, you know?”

“You called me—”

 _Cruel_.

Another blink, another raising of her brows. “Oh! Oh, no, Felix, I didn’t mean it at all! Oh, I’m so sorry, I didn’t—”

“Stop,” Felix said flatly, and she stopped. “Let’s just…forget about it.”

And although Annette brightened and changed the subject, asking about his plans for the day—training—and if she could join him—of course she could—Felix felt his dinner churn in his stomach the rest of the day.

* * *

“Felix,” Annette whimpered into his ear, and Felix hid his smile by biting the dip between her collarbones. “Felix!”

“So beautiful,” he mumbled against her skin, her pulse, lips trailing up and down her neck so she couldn’t hear his praises. But she reacted as if she had, gasping and clutching him and wiggling her too-clothed body against his. Still, _Felix’s_ shirt was off, and that was a delicious enough relationship milestone that the fabric scraping his chest only excited him more.

Annette’s bed was not built for two, but that only forced them closer. Felix’s usual aversion to touch vanished somehow, made captive not just by her body pressing him into the mattress, but by her positively musical cries of pleasure and delight mixing with his moans. Her voice—more, more, he _always_ wanted to hear more—rang out in the room with each of his kisses and caresses, and no small part of him reveled in how _he_ had done that. _He_ had drawn those sounds out of her chest, throat, lips like a musician would draw chords from the most delicate of instruments.

And that proud and prideful part of him was what made Felix smirk into her skin, saying thoughtlessly, “Always love how you sing for me.”

Annette yanked herself out of his arms like he’d burned her.

“Felix,” she chastised him. The blush in her cheeks reddened more in embarrassment than arousal. Felix couldn’t decide if he liked how he now knew the difference.

“Annette,” he snapped and scowled out of habit. Now he flushed too, but worse: pink flooded his face and crept down his neck to his bare chest. “I mean…sorry.”

What was he sorry for?

“What are you sorry for?” an incredulous Annette asked. “I don’t get it.”

Now _that_ was the question. And Felix had no idea how to answer it.

One moment she was writhing against him, singeing love and lust into his skin with her mouth. The next she was reprimanding him just out of arms’ reach. And the _next_ she was telling him he hadn’t done anything wrong?

But the coldness sinking in his stomach told him he _had_.

“I don’t get it either,” Felix confessed, and although he’d meant the admission to comfort her, all it did was push her away.

Which was what always happened with Annette. She would make excuses, she would stumble, and she would flee. And it was what Annette did now, leaving him alone and half-dressed in her bedroom. The echo of Annette’s frantic footsteps growing more and more faint replaced the echo of her voice moaning ecstasy with his every touch.

* * *

Maybe things had returned to normal.

Maybe they were back to sitting together on the steps outside her room, Felix scraping a whetstone along his blade and Annette healing a scrape on her knee from her latest tumble down those very same steps.

Maybe they were back to sparring sessions that ended with her pinning him to the sawdust floor and breathing a triumphant “ _I win_ ” against his grinning lips.

Maybe they were back to the dining hall, sharing a meal together in the most literal sense of the word: Annette teasing a spoonful of her dinner into his complaining mouth while their friends ignored their antics.

Maybe things had returned to normal, but Felix didn’t notice.

~*~

Annette was humming again.

Felix had packed for home hours ago, but Annette had all sorts of…books and mysterious bottles and clothes he’d never even seen her wear. Unsurprisingly, her packing process wasn’t nearly as efficient as his: she kept tossing items from her bed into her trunk, humming paused each time she missed and dove for whatever fallen knick-knack needed rescuing, and staring forlornly at the pile of miscellany still remaining.

But humming all the while.

“Annette,” Felix said, softly, like he would to a skittish horse. Annette hummed acknowledgement. “Annette, you…know I like it. When you sing.” More a statement than a question, declared with confidence he didn’t quite feel.

Her humming trailed off. “Yeah, I do.”

A frustrated sigh hissed from between his teeth. “Then why pretend you don’t believe me?”

Lipstick and eyeshadow cases went ignored on her bed as Annette chewed her bottom lip. “Just…you’re really serious all the time.”

“I’m serious about you,” he swore, then bit back a different kind of swear as his face burned.

If he were to look—which he wouldn’t—he’d see Annette blushing, too. “Thank you,” she whispered. “I believe you.”

“Then why—”

“Can you just say it like that?” Annette asked. She stepped over unpaired shoes; Felix prepared to catch her, but for once, her clumsiness didn’t betray her. She wrapped her arms around his neck, but before Felix could hope to kiss her quiet, gazed so deeply into his eyes it paralyzed him. “Not _why_ you like m—my songs. Just that…you like them. I don’t want a million…explanations, just that…That’s all I need.”

Words were not Felix’s forte. They didn’t spill from his lips like easy prayers or soothing songs. And, he realized now, with Annette demanding nothing from him but _him_ and his love for her…

Words could teach him the meaning of _peace_ just as silence could keep him from destroying it.

So Felix cupped Annette’s jaw in his callused, war-scarred hands, brought her mouth closer to his, and used no words at all.


End file.
